any who hello and glad to see another Artisan on here ...... more fodder to taste. looks like you have some nice work there and boy i would like to see more. please post more pics and flicker works great too give it a try thats what i use.

as once said by that mod guy who you should not ignore we need more stuff on the shelf so please help!!

looking for more.............

CpuP.S. sorry for the late drop in got stuck in the mud. luckily i had some cha Gau with me and i got out un-scared.

Very nice Oribe! Whenever I see a Japanese Oribe, I am reminded that I know so little since I don't really understand them very much. I see the bright green color which I like since it is my fave color, but beyond that ... still need to learn.

Any insight, Robert, into what is going on with your chawan that would help me and others to understand Oribe a bit more?

Historically, Oribe is named after Furuta Oribe who was a samurai under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Oda Nobunaga both powerful Osaka warlords. Oribe studied Sadou under Sen no Rikyu before branching out to start his own school of tea and it is said that he then commisioned Mino potters to create a new type of ware for him thus the birth of Oribe ware. Asked to plot against the Emporer by his warlords in Osaka, his revolt failed and he, as well as all of his sons were beheaded.

Another intersting factoid surrounding Oribe is that of the Mino potter Kato Tokuro who passed away in the mid-80's. This story was related to me by Kato Takahiro, Tokuro's grandson whom I visited a few years ago at his family's studio. Tokuro, along with Arakawa Toyozo (Shino), Miwa Jyusetsu (Hagi), Kaneshige Michio (Bizen) and Kitakawa Handeshi (a banker from Tsu who made the most amazing pots and was the intellectual/spiritual leader of the group...... more on Handeshi later) were a group of amazingly talented potters doing work to revive and understand works from the Momoyama period which is considered to be the pinncale of Japanese studio pottery. All of these men had their respective specialities and Tokuro's was Oribe. Carrying an ego uncommon in his day, Tokuro thought that his work rivaled anything ever done historically so he proceeded to break up a series of his pieces and then bury them. As most of these potters were scholars as well as archeologists concerning their respective specialties, digging shards for study was quite common. After a number of years passed, Tokuro partially dug up his latest "find" of Oribe ware and then promptly notified Monbusho (Japanese cultural ministry) in Tokyo of the location of the specimens at which time Monbusho sent their Oribe expert down to Nagoya to join Tokuro in his "research". Retuning to Tokyo, the gentleman from Monbusho promptly wrote a lengthly treatise on the newest, and most amazing find of Oribe shards. These matters are not taken lightly in Japan however and when Tokuro let everyone in on the joke, the gentleman in Toyko was promptly fired in disgrace while Tokuro was summarily excommunicated from the prestigeous Japan National Potters Association as well as forced to move his kiln and studio.

More on the posted Oribe chawan later.....

R

Kato ei 2a.jpg

Kato Takahiro copy.jpg

interesting about the einin tsubo incident

the 'disgraced' fellow fired also committed suicide. sad story.also kato was never a ningen kokuho. it probably didn't matter to him

saw one of kato tokuro's chawan at kuroda toen in shibuya. yikes $150,000 US !

my fiance's dad is a big kato takahiro collector. do you know him personally ? that is a cool photo of you and kato san. he looks really young in that pic.

i saw a show of kamagure, 3 generations of kato family in musee de tomo in tokyo. kato tokuro, shigetaka and takahiro. takahiro's huge piece was amazing, sort of murasaki shino huge foot wedged tsubo. it was standing upright. amazing ! looked like it weighed a ton !

i'm a big fan of kato tokuro. it was my first potter shared by a friend thru a book when i first started studying ceramics. his forms are amazing. saw also some huge wall pieces in some kyoto hotels. they were like 4x8 meters big. looks like they were made like a puzzle on the ground then mounted on a wall.